Many mail sorting systems utilize scanning and optical character recognition to detect destination information for use in sorting mail pieces. In such procedures, the information important for the corresponding mail, namely the recognized addresses, are maintained in a database. However, some mail pieces do not have readable ZIP code or other address information, that is to say such pieces lack information detectable by the optical character recognition equipment and software. These pieces are considered as rejects or scrap mail. A video encoding technique has been developed to handle such rejects.
If a piece is rejected, the video image of the mail piece is saved and presented to a keying operator. The operator keys in the address information manually read from the piece, at least to the extent necessary to enable sorting. The keyed data is stored in a record in the database, and a corresponding bar code or other ID tag is printed on the mail piece. During subsequent sorting, the piece can be recognized and sorted in response to the printed ID tag and the keyed data.
Video Encoding thus provides coding of mail for sorting machines, when the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and directory software has failed to resolve the address on the mail piece. One industry standard implementation of a Video Encode process is “on-line” in that the reject is video encoded without removal from the mail stream. However, on-line encoding requires a long delay line, which delays the mail piece reaching the sorter stacker sufficiently to allow for encoding of the scrap mail piece.
The alternative standard approach, referred to as an Off-Line Video Encode operation involves sorting out the rejects during a first pass (FIG. 1a) and video encoding the rejects. Then, a separate pass through the sorter (FIG. 1b) is used to re-run only the mail that has been coded by the Video Encoding operators.
The disadvantage of the On-Line method is the extent of the necessary delay. The disadvantage of the Off-Line approach is that the sorting machine has to be configured especially for the separate run to handle the video encoded scrap mail. This is not “user friendly” to the machine operator, since the operator has to stop the “Machine First Pass” and select a special pass to run the Video Encoded mail. The separate sorting run incurs an additional expenditure of work and time, and thereby leads to increased costs. Further, these separate runs interrupt the continuity in the workflow of the machine. Altogether, the Off-Line processing of the scrap mails overstrains the machine's efficiency excessively.